


No More Dead Friends

by Sarah1281



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Original Character(s), Season/Series 10, probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-16 15:22:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3493304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarah1281/pseuds/Sarah1281
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After unexpectedly encountering an old friend who wants nothing to do with him out of fear of her life, Castiel is forced to confront the fact that he may have a dead friend problem. That's alright, though. It's not like Sam and Dean can't relate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No More Dead Friends

Amiele could probably have been paying more attention and avoided the whole situation but it was Sunday and she had just come from church and she hadn’t expected to literally run into Castiel in the middle of the sidewalk. Castiel and two humans who, knowing him, were probably the Winchesters. 

He stared at her, recognizing her instantly of course. “Amiele.” 

“I’m sorry, what?” she asked politely, knowing it was pointless but still not being able to bring herself to give up as quickly as that. 

“I know it’s you, Amiele,” Castiel said, his eyes boring into her. 

“Amiele?” the shorter human asked, snorting. “Who’s she? Some ex?” 

“Amiele is an angel,” Castiel revealed. 

“That’s very sweet of you to say but I’m kind of really not,” Amiele said, backing up slightly. 

Castiel glanced around to make sure they were alone and then turned to the humans. “Close your eyes.” 

Oh, so that was how he was going to play it? 

She shut her eyes tightly until the light and the noise accompanying a show of grace faded. 

“Uh, what the hell?” the taller human asked. 

Castiel was frowning at her. “You’re not supposed to shut your eyes, too.” 

Amiele shrugged. “Well forgive me for not needing your permission. You can’t just tell everyone in the area to shut their eyes and expect that only your friends will actually do it so you can smite your enemies.” 

“That is how it usually works,” Castiel said. 

“Look, can you just explain what’s going on here?” the shorter human asked. “We’re just going to assume you’re an angel for now because I really don’t have the patience to sit through an argument about it or whatever else Cas might come up with to prove it.” 

Amiele sighed. “Fine. But why don’t you just tell me who you two are?” 

The taller one blinked. “We’re the Winchesters.” 

“I kind of gathered that,” she said dryly. “But which one is Sam and which is Dean?” 

“Never gotten that before,” the shorter one muttered. “I’m Dean and this is my brother Sam.” 

“I’d say nice to meet you except, well, I was kind of not wanting this to happen.” 

Castiel’s eyes turned wounded. “Why wouldn’t you want to see me, Amiele? You’re my friend.” 

“Another friend?” Dean asked incredulously. “Dude, how many long-lost friends do you have?” 

“Not as many as you’d think, actually,” Amiele said. 

“Look, I’m not trying to claim that I know your angel business better than you angels but it seems that every time we turn around we meet another old friend of his,” Dean said. “And I’m not against the dude having friends but at some point it gets a little ridiculous. Was Cas like Heaven’s prom king or something?” 

“Heaven doesn’t have a prom,” Castiel informed him. 

“Something like that,” Amiele said. “Not everyone liked him, certainly. Nobody’s universally liked. Even our Father has his detractors. But you do realize that literally half of Heaven followed him when he stood against Raphael?” 

“So?” Dean asked. “Dude was kind of a dick.” 

“On the other hand, and I mean no offence, so have most of the angels we’ve met so clearly that’s not a big turn-off for them,” Sam said. 

Dean looked thoughtful and tilted his head towards Sam. 

Amiele had actually not had a problem with Raphael but she supposed she could understand why the anti-apocalypse humans wouldn’t like him. “No matter what anyone may have thought about Raphael personally, he was the last archangel. Castiel, while clearly chosen by God, was not the smart choice. And yet people followed him. You think they would have followed just anyone?” 

“I’m guessing the answer is ‘no’?” Sam asked rhetorically. 

“And look what I led them to,” Castiel said, looking away. 

“You sure you’re a friend of Cas’s?” Dean asked. “You haven’t tried to kill him yet. His friends usually do.” 

“I think you mean he usually kills his friends,” Amiele argued. 

Castiel just looked sadly at her, his shoulders slumped. 

Dean glared at her. “With the way they keep trying to kill him, is it any wonder?” 

“Okay, clearly we’ve got a chicken or egg situation here,” Sam said quickly. “There’s really no need to start arguing about who started the kill-fest that seems to be going on between Cas and his friends. Uh, sorry.” 

“It’s not untrue,” Castiel said, sighing. “Amiele, is that why you didn’t want to see me? You believed I would kill you?” 

“I believed there was a good chance it could happen, yes.” 

“Why would I do that to you?” Castiel asked. “What you must think of me…what the other angels are saying about me is absolutely not true. I would have thought you’d know better than to believe the rumors.” 

Impatiently, Amiele shook her head. “I don’t care about the rumors. I don’t think you knowingly cast everyone out of heaven and I don’t think that, right now, you’re particularly inclined to murder me.” 

“Then why?” 

“Because even though you always get so sad and you never want to, you have a really really troubling habit of killing all your friends,” Amelie repeated. “Weren’t you listening?” 

“Hey, that’s not always his fault,” Dean defended him. 

“And that will be such a great consolation when I find myself skewered one day,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Not wanting to kill him didn’t exactly save Samandriel, did it?” 

“That was Naomi’s fault!” 

Amelie nodded at Dean. “Right, because that definitely makes him less dead.” 

“Amelie-” Castiel began. 

“I’m sorry if you’re upset about this. Maybe I’m completely wrong and nothing will happen to me if I spend time with you,” she interrupted. “But is it really worth the risk? Because I’m kind of thinking that it isn’t.” 

Dean snorted. “Some friend you are.” 

She whirled on him. “Really? I have to be willing to risk my life to even be in the presence of a friend for me to be a good friend? I feel you don’t have the, uh, healthiest way of looking at this.” 

“I have no wish to force my presence on anyone,” Castiel announced. 

Amelie turned back to him. “Oh, don’t be like that. I’ll tell you what: if all this gets fixed and you can go, I don’t know, ten years without killing any friends and heaven manages to not be on the verge of destruction or at each other’s throats, I’ll look you up.” 

“Ten years?” Sam couldn’t believe it. “That’s- that’s kind of a lot to ask.” 

“Not really,” Castiel disagreed. “Before Azazel’s machinations, heaven had been at peace since Lucifer’s fall.” 

Dean let out a low whistle. “Damn. I guess all these constant angel tiffs isn’t really the norm for you guys, is it?” 

“It may very well be after we ruined fate,” Castiel said. “But before that…no.” 

“And, as I told Balthazar, I want no part in this so until everyone sorts out their various stabbing people angel blade issues, I’m going to stay here.” She crossed her arms. “Well, not here here. I’m going to go about my business and pretend I don’t know any of you or anyone else that’s not a normal human.” 

“Balthazar,” Castiel repeated the name heavily. “That must have been some time ago.” 

“Wait, you have a friend who has been down here for years and you didn’t even notice?” Sam asked skeptically. 

“We’re immortal,” Amelie explained. “Barring accidents, of course, and lately there have been a lot of those. There’s nothing strange about losing track of people for a few years.” 

“It’s not like we don’t do that, too, and we’re not even guaranteed to make it to forty,” Dean said. 

“But wait,” Sam said, his eyes lighting up. “You’ve been down here on Earth for years? I don’t know why you talking to Balthazar means it had to be a long time ago but if it did you would have been down here when Metatron cast the angels out of heaven, right?” 

Amelie nodded, seeing where he was going with this. She let him and Dean see the projection of her completely undamaged wings. “Yes, it does. I was fortunate.” 

“So you could fly up to heaven right now?” Dean asked, his eyes narrowed. “And you could have when Metatron had taken over?” 

“Yes,” Amelie acknowledged easily. “But I felt that would have gotten me killed.” 

“So you’re a coward,” Dean accused. 

“It literally makes no difference to me if you think that or not,” Amelie told him. “Though I would keep in mind that, unlike with humans, no one knows what happens to a dead angel. We were never meant to die. And, on the subject of Balthazar, just chalk that up to be one more reason I’m not coming back just yet.” 

She flew away before it could occur to any of them to try and stop her. 

“Balthazar,” Sam said slowly. “Cas, what does Balthazar have to do with her not wanting to come back? Did he do something to her?” 

Castiel looked away. 

“Come on, Cas, talk to us,” Dean said. 

“Balthazar is dead.” 

“What?” Sam sked, surprised. “When did that happen?” 

“Did you truly not know?” 

“How would we know?” Sam asked. “If angels don’t die in front of us we usually find out from you. What happened?” 

“It was shortly before I completed that ritual and destroyed Raphael,” Castiel said. “I knew he was helping you. He promised he would stand by me. He didn’t. He…is dead.” 

“Wait, wait, wait,” Sam said, holding up a hand. “You knew he was helping us try and stop you and you just broke my wall and showed up like all the time to apologize to Dean and try to help him while you killed him?” 

“Breaking your wall ain’t no small thing, Sam,” Dean growled. 

Sam rolled his eyes. “Yeah, trust me, I know. I wasn’t the one who got to mostly forget about those Lucifer hallucinations until that wannabe vessel freak. But he intended to fix that. And-and if things hadn’t gone all to hell he could have killed us to keep us more out of the way and then brought us back. As far as I know, only God can bring back an angel. So you killed your friend for helping us, and not even very much, and you just let us get on with it?” 

“Yeah, that is kinda…disproportionate,” Dean admitted grudgingly. 

“I shouldn’t have killed him,” Castiel said, bowing his head. “And I regret it, I do. He was my friend for thousands and thousands of years. I mourned him once before. He wanted nothing to do with heaven or the fighting. He said it would never stop and I must confess he saw the situation more clearly than I did. And yet it didn’t take a great deal of persuasion before he agreed to help me and I killed him. He betrayed me but he was right, wasn’t he? I should never have done that.” 

“Come on, Cas, don’t beat yourself up over it,” Dean said, frowning. “I mean, yeah, that may have been one of the worst decisions ever but it’s not like you didn’t already die then lose your memory and go crazy and then stay in Purgatory over that. Sooner or later, you gotta move past it.” 

“Staying in Purgatory only led to me falling under Naomi’s power-”

“No, nope, not happening,” Dean interrupted. “Let it go.” 

Castiel frowned but said nothing. 

Sam cleared his throat. “But, I mean, surely not all of your friends are dead. There’s Hannah!” 

“Yes but if she had kept travelling with me and not returned to heaven to free her vessel I fear she would have died, too.” 

“Well that’s crap,” Dean declared. “Cas, if you keep travelling with people and doing dangerous shit then of course eventually people are going to die! Sam and I both have. You have. So don’t act like it’s your fault people die just because they don’t find a way to bounce back like we do.” He paused. “Okay, I guess sometimes it can be your fault when people around you die if you do something stupid but that isn’t always the case!” 

“Duly noted,” Castiel said wryly. “I am not sure that I can still call her a friend because, after my reeducation, I gave her up to heaven as well and the last I saw her she was trying to kill you and your parents but there is Anna.” 

Sam and Dean avoided his eyes. 

“What?” 

“She might have…did you really not hear about that?” Sam asked. “I mean, it happened a long time ago. Happened a long time ago for us and even longer ago chronologically. However that even works.” 

Castiel’s eyes widened in alarm. “I had assumed that she was hiding given the fact that all of heaven was out for her head. I had thought that she only did not make contact with me because I had betrayed her. Did something happen to Anna?” 

“Uh, well, there’s no easy way to tell you this but Michael kind of smited her ass after she killed Sam,” Dean said awkwardly. 

“Oh.” 

They were quiet for a long moment. 

“I had wondered why she had abandoned her plan to stop the apocalypse by preventing Sam from having ever been born and scattering the ashes of him and his parents throughout the universe.” 

“That wouldn’t have worked though, right?” Sam asked. “That’s what you said.” 

“It wouldn’t have worked,” Castiel said firmly. “But she did seem rather set on it.” 

“The only witnesses were Michael and Uriel,” Sam offered. “Uriel probably wasn’t allowed to talk about anything that went on that night because it was all future spoilers and Anna wouldn’t have even become human yet. Of course he was already dead by the time we got back to the present. And I guess Michael didn’t want to give anyone ideas or didn’t feel like sharing with the troops or something like that.” 

Castiel nodded slowly. “Well there was, there was Meg. I don’t know if friend is the right word but she did take care of me and I did care for her. I’ve had no time to waste on hunting her down and I imagine she would have been working with Abaddon and not amenable to seeing me while we were working, sort of, with Crowley.” 

Dean groaned. “God dammit.” 

Castiel stared at them. “Not her, too. How was I not told about this?” 

“Well, you know,” Sam said awkwardly. “You left before she even died, Crowley killed her and we escaped that night, and we didn’t see you for a while. Then when we did we had bigger problems and were trying to do the trials and Crowley was killing all our saves. Dean was all pissy-”

“I was not!” 

“And you went off with Metatron anyway. Then all that happened and I guess it just didn’t come up,” Sam said, shrugging. “We weren’t really the biggest Meg fans, you know.” 

“But you knew she was important to me. If she was killed by Crowley that night she died for us. She was on our side.” 

“Died for you, maybe, but she was not one of us,” Dean said firmly. 

“Dean-”

“No, you listen,” Dean interrupted. “I know you had some weird sort of hot for nurse thing going on whatever but Meg went through our address book and killed half the people we grew up with. And that’s before she called us to try and get the Colt. She abducted our dad and got him possessed and help spark off that whole chain reaction that led to him selling his soul and going to hell to save me. She possessed Sam and killed some innocent people. She tried to kill me and Jo. She was Lucifer’s. Those hellhounds that killed Jo? She sent them after us and I’m gonna lay Ellen on her, too. She wants the goddamn apocalypse and the only reason, the only reason, we were ever in the same room not trying to kill each other was because she hated Crowley more than us. And why did she hate Crowley, exactly? Was it because of any of the numerous evil things he’s done? No, she hated him for the one good thing he did. She hated him because he helped stop Lucifer. So, go ahead, be her friend. But leave me and Sam out of it.” 

Castiel looked at Sam who looked away. 

“People can change. Look what I’ve done. Look what we’ve all done. She may not have had our good intentions but she never matched the destruction we caused.” 

Dean snorted. “Speak for yourself. She was around for hundreds or thousands of years. I’m sure her body count eclipses anything we could ever hope to do.” 

“Of course people can change,” Sam said placatingly. “It’s just…I’m not sure she did, exactly. Yes she stopped killing people at the moment but what would she have done if Crowley did die and she wasn’t hunted anymore? What would she have done if she were still around when Abaddon was all about killing Crowley and bringing the old ways back? Is that really change? Maybe one day it could have been but we only found her in the first place because she got innocent people killed to buy herself some time. And when I called her on it she just looked at me and reminded me she was a demon.” 

“You forgave me for what I did.” 

Dean shrugged. “Yeah, well, we like you. And she’s dead so it doesn’t matter anyway. So yeah, you’ve got another dead friend. Anyone else you’re wondering about? Because chances are if you haven’t seen them in a while they probably died while you weren’t looking, too.” 

Castiel set his jaw in a way that clearly indicated that he was choosing not to argue rather than agreeing with them about Meg. “Maybe Amelie was right to stay away from me.”

“Like being around you is the only source of angel death,” Dean said dismissively. “Especially since Crowley keeps getting his hands on angel blades.” 

“With her wings she’ll probably be okay,” Sam said encouragingly. “She’s lasted this long, after all. And if it makes you feel better, it’s not just you. All our friends are dead, too.” 

“Oh, now that is not true!” Dean objected. 

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Really.” 

“Yeah, really. There’s Charlie and Garth and Jody!” 

“Wow, three friends,” Sam deadpanned. “Out of how many?” 

“We’ve got more than three,” Dean protested. “Just don’t put me on the spot like that.” 

“Either way, you have to admit that our friends have like a ninety-five percent chance of getting themselves killed,” Sam said. “And that’s probably being generous.” 

“We make friends who do dangerous shit!” Dean said, throwing his hands up in the air. “What do you expect? If anything, I think we extended some of those people’s lives. I mean, even Kevin – who I definitely got killed – lived longer because we were there than if we had just never met him after he became a prophet.” 

“Wasn’t that kind of also our fault?” Sam asked. “When we got the Leviathan tablet?” 

“Shut up, Sam, without us Dick Roman would have activated Kevin anyway.” 

“None of this is making me feel better,” Castiel complained. 

“You know what will?” Dean asked rhetorically. “A nice cold one. Let’s hit the bar.” 

He turned and walked away and, after a moment’s pause, Sam and Castiel hurried after him. 

“Are you serious?” Sam asked. “It’s like eleven in the morning, Dean.” 

“Perfect, it won’t be crowded.” 

“You know alcohol has no effect on me now that I have grace again,” Castiel told him. 

“I got a memory of you and a dozen shots that says otherwise and if nothing else watching you do that again will make me feel better,” Dean replied. “And, really, won’t that make you feel better?” 

Sam sighed. “Let’s just try not to make any new friends. We wouldn’t want to somehow manage to get anyone killed before lunch.”


End file.
